[BobKabob]

It seems to me that there could be a version of Python that is solely optimized for speed, and allows full compilation. I haven't given this a great deal of thought, but I bet that if you defined a subset of the language that is Python-like, but doesn't allow the full introspection and fancy class manipulations, and other cool features, you could have a fully compilable language that would rival C in performance, but kick C's butt in readability.

Maybe it's not a binary switch (performance exclusions switch, for example). Maybe it's a setting with various degrees of performance. You need introspection? We'll give you that, but now you can only compile at the 2x performance level (or whatever). You need certain libraries that aren't written for performance? That's going to cost you.

Then again, it's quite possible that I don't know what I am talking about!

[ianb]

PyPy itself has RPython, which is a restricted Python that can be compiled down to something fast. Cython allows you to annotate Python code (inline or externally) to allow compiling it down. ShedSkin compiles some Python directly to C++. So there's a bunch of options (all of which PyPy has to compete with!)